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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's do a classic good news bad news top

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Speaker 1: to the show. Today. Good news, wind and solar power

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Speaker 1: are now cheaper than power from fossil fuels. Bad news,

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Speaker 1: sometimes the sun goes down and the wind does not blow.

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Speaker 1: The energy transition, the shift to carbon free energy, may

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Speaker 1: be the most important problem of our time, and the

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Speaker 1: most important problem within that problem may be energy storage.

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Speaker 1: How to take that sweet, sweet carbon free energy we

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Speaker 1: generate when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining,

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Speaker 1: and store it for use whenever we want it. We

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Speaker 1: do have some ways to store energy for some uses.

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Speaker 1: Lithium ion batteries are good for cars, for example, but

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Speaker 1: they are way too expensive for lots of use cases.

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Speaker 1: Think of factories making energy intensive things like steel or aluminum.

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Speaker 1: They use tons of energy, they compete over every last cent,

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Speaker 1: and it is nowhere near cost effective for them to

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Speaker 1: use lithium ion batteries. So to bring the energy transition

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Speaker 1: to industry, we're gonna have to figure out new ways

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Speaker 1: to store energy, ways that are not only reliable but

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Speaker 1: also very very cheap. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is

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Speaker 1: What's Your Problem? The show where I talk to people

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Speaker 1: who are trying to make technological progress. My guest today

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Speaker 1: is Andrew Panik. He's the co founder and CEO of

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Speaker 1: the energy storage company and Torah Energy. Andrew's problem is this,

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Speaker 1: how can you store renewable energy in a way that

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Speaker 1: is cheap enough and reliable enough to convince giant global

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Speaker 1: industries to abandon fossil fuels. Andrew is really into the

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Speaker 1: techno economics of the energy transition. Basically, find new technologies

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Speaker 1: that move us away from burning fossil fuels and that

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Speaker 1: make economic sense. He dropped out of Stanford to start

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Speaker 1: his first company, and that company helped make big solar

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Speaker 1: installations a little bit cheaper. Then he went back to

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Speaker 1: Stanford to finish college. And he assumed at the time

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Speaker 1: that there was an energy storage solution on the way,

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Speaker 1: that lithium ion batteries would just keep getting cheaper and

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Speaker 1: cheaper until they were so cheap they'd meet all our

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Speaker 1: energy storage needs. Then one day he learned he was wrong.

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Speaker 2: Those are some of the best moments in life when

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Speaker 2: somebody tells you that you're wrong, and you go and

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Speaker 2: you reevaluate and you find out, man, I was wrong

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Speaker 2: and that person was right. And so this particular moment

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Speaker 2: for me was actually speaking with a guy named Matteo Harmio,

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Speaker 2: and he was coming out of Tesla's energy business. And

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Speaker 2: so Tesla, you know, obviously most famous for making electric vehicles,

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Speaker 2: but also has a very strong business putting lithium ion

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Speaker 2: batteries into stationary energy storage to support the grid. And

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Speaker 2: so you know, here I was coming with this hypothesis, Hey,

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Speaker 2: lithium mion's going to do it all. And he had

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Speaker 2: just left Tesla at that point and essentially said lithium

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Speaker 2: he can't, can't do it all. We need something that's

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Speaker 2: going to be far cheaper than lithium mine.

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Speaker 1: And was he saying, not only are they not cheap

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Speaker 1: enough now, but they're not gonna get cheap enough exactly.

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Speaker 2: And that was the key point.

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Speaker 1: What's the floor on the price?

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Speaker 2: The floor in the price really comes from the materials. Eventually,

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Speaker 2: the cost of lithium in batteries is going to be

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Speaker 2: approaching just the cost of the lithium, you know, the copper.

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Speaker 2: So there's a long way it can still come down,

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Speaker 2: and we think it will, but that floor is still

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Speaker 2: above where it needs to be forevery other just.

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Speaker 1: The lithium and the copper. I mean, it won't work

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Speaker 1: for a lot of things. It'll be too expensive. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So now you've got a problem to solve. You realize, oh,

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Speaker 1: lithium mine's not going to do it. What do you do?

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Speaker 2: Look at everything under the sun that might be able

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Speaker 2: to do it. So we, you know, we, and we

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Speaker 2: in this case is myself and one of my two

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Speaker 2: co founders that started working together around this time. We

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Speaker 2: started going through every technology that you could imagine that

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Speaker 2: could store energy. We looked at hydrogen, we looked at

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Speaker 2: compressed air, we looked at gravitational energy storage, various types

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Speaker 2: of new electrochemical batteries that are not lithium ion that

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Speaker 2: might be able to store it for cheaper and you know,

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Speaker 2: we made sort of toy models of all of these

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Speaker 2: things to try and figure out, you know, what the

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Speaker 2: cost floors for those technologies would be. And the one

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Speaker 2: that really jumped out at us was thermal energy storage.

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Speaker 1: We're we're gonna spend the whole rest of the time

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Speaker 1: on thermal energy storage. But you rattled off a bunch

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Speaker 1: of other energy storage technologies that are in use in

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Speaker 1: various places or that people are trying, and so can

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Speaker 1: you just talk about the sort of broader landscape of

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Speaker 1: energy storage for a sec I mean, like what is

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Speaker 1: the what's it look like? What seems promising to or

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Speaker 1: not promising?

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Speaker 2: So you know an example, you know, there are lots

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Speaker 2: of other electro chemistries, a lot of other different types

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Speaker 2: of batteries said are not lithium ion that I think

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Speaker 2: are super fascinating, definitely worth people pursuing, and could end

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Speaker 2: up being the solution for a lot of these problems.

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Speaker 1: Iron I mean the guy, the guy from Tesla who

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Speaker 1: who told you lithium I wasn't going to get there, right,

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Speaker 1: he has like an iron battery company, now right? Is

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Speaker 1: that that's right? That's right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, very interesting company doing doing iron.

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Speaker 2: Actually there are a few companies doing iron based batteries

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Speaker 2: of any sort.

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Speaker 1: And interestingly, iron is cheaper than lithium. I mean, is

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Speaker 1: that the core proposition there or part of it?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a that's a huge, a huge part

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Speaker 2: of it. And so a lot of interesting things going

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Speaker 2: on there.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: An example that we just decided to kill entirely from

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Speaker 2: our search was gravitational energy storage. This was one where

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Speaker 2: just the energy density was so low that we didn't

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Speaker 2: see a future part. There's there's a wonderful te Just.

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Speaker 1: To be clear, Gravitational energy storage means when you have

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Speaker 1: power from whatever, a wind, turbine, move something up, put

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Speaker 1: pump water up a hill, and then when you need

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Speaker 1: power later, let the water flow down and spin a

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Speaker 1: turbine or something that's gravitation.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely yes, And this is actually one of the

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Speaker 2: backbones of our grid today. And this is a great technology,

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Speaker 2: but it's one of those things where most of the

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Speaker 2: good sites to do that, most of the good places

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Speaker 2: where you can put a dam and have two reservoirs

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Speaker 2: that are really different in height over just a few

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Speaker 2: miles away from each other, like most of their sites

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Speaker 2: have already been taken.

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Speaker 1: So like a good idea, but not a lot of

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Speaker 1: room to do new stuff there.

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Speaker 2: Exactly great idea, we kind of tapped out the resource.

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Speaker 1: Okay, what seemed like a bad idea. When you're looking

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Speaker 1: at different energy storage ideas.

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Speaker 2: I don't want to speak ill of any particular energy

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Speaker 2: storage but I'll just say there's a wide variety and

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Speaker 2: even within one broad category, there's often companies that you know,

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Speaker 2: in our view are taking really great approaches or some

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Speaker 2: that are taking approaches that we just sort of scratch

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Speaker 2: our head and wonder about.

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Speaker 1: There. I'm curious, but I respect, I respect your civility.

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Speaker 1: I appreciate it. So you look at these different technologies

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Speaker 1: and you arrive at thermal, which basically means heat, right,

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Speaker 1: using energy when you have it to heat something up

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Speaker 1: and store energy in the form of heat. So why

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Speaker 1: do you land there?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, thermal has a few things going for it that

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Speaker 2: really caught our attention. The first is that it has

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Speaker 2: the potential to have an extremely low cost floor, so

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Speaker 2: you can take some of the cheapest materials, most abundant

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Speaker 2: materials on Earth and get them hot. You don't need

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Speaker 2: a lot of complex processing, you don't need any special

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Speaker 2: metals or fancy materials. It's just stuff getting hot. So

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Speaker 2: it has the ability to get to really really low cost.

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Speaker 2: That was the first thing. The second thing was it

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Speaker 2: had very high energy density, so a relatively small thermal

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Speaker 2: battery could store a lot of energy. And it really

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Speaker 2: became apparent that there's not one energy storage problem, there's

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Speaker 2: really two. The first energy storage problem is the one

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Speaker 2: that everybody thinks about, which is you have excess wind

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Speaker 2: and solar at some times you need to store it

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Speaker 2: some how, and then you need to get it back

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Speaker 2: as electricity for the times that you don't have enough electricity.

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Speaker 2: But the other storage problem is the one of heat,

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Speaker 2: and heat is you know, I would say has been

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Speaker 2: historically an underappreciated part of our energy system. We think

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Speaker 2: a lot about electricity, but we often don't think as

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Speaker 2: much about heat. But it turns out about half of

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Speaker 2: the energy we use globally is in the form of heat.

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Speaker 1: So the kind of heat you're talking about, just to

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Speaker 1: be clear, it's not just like making offices or factories

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Speaker 1: the right temperature for people, right, it's like wildly intense

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Speaker 1: amounts of heat you need to whatever, forge steel or something. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's like great, big hot industrial kind of heat. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And fossil fuels are really good at that, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: they store an incredible amount of energy. They give you

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Speaker 1: a lot of heat whatever you want it, Like, it's

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Speaker 1: hard to beat.

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Speaker 2: I mean, if fossil fuels weren't great, we wouldn't be

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Speaker 2: struggling so much to make the energy transition happen on

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Speaker 2: the timeframe that we need it to. And so, yeah,

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Speaker 2: fossil fuels are generally pretty cheap and they have the

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Speaker 2: ability to have that energy on demand.

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Speaker 1: And these are the kind of commodity industries that are

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Speaker 1: fighting over sents. Right. The marginal cost is everything, and

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Speaker 1: so if they're going to use something other than fossil fuel,

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Speaker 1: it absolutely has to be as cheap and as reliable.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, And those two things we always think about as

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Speaker 2: far as what our customers need. They care about two things.

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Speaker 2: They care about the energy being cost effective, and they

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Speaker 2: care about the energy being available when they need it.

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Speaker 1: So you land on heating up blocks of carbon, right

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Speaker 1: of graphite? How do you arrive there?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we made a spreadsheet with just every cheap

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Speaker 2: material that we could find on Earth and everything from

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Speaker 2: just like rocks, you know, just like different types of rocks.

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Speaker 1: Let's see, rocks are cheap, rocks.

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Speaker 2: Are cheap, super cheap, you know, rocks, sand, bricks of

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Speaker 2: various sorts. You know, we looked at all sorts of metals. Iron.

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Speaker 2: Can you just store it in enough iron or steel.

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Speaker 1: Just to heat up iron, to just heat.

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Speaker 2: Up iron exactly, maybe even to the point that it's

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Speaker 2: molten and it's liquid, you know, can you just heat

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Speaker 2: up liquid iron? So lots and lots of different things there,

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Speaker 2: and you know, we tried to look at you know,

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Speaker 2: what's the cost, what's the energy density? How much energy

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Speaker 2: do you store per amount of material? We looked at,

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Speaker 2: are there any you know, safety challenges, corrosion challenges, toxicity,

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Speaker 2: all of those sorts of things went into it.

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Speaker 1: Andrew and his colleagues eventually decide to use graphite, just

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Speaker 1: like what's in a pencil. In a minute, Andrew explains

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Speaker 1: why they tried very hard to convince themselves not to

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Speaker 1: keep going, and then kept going. Anywhay, that's the end

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Speaker 1: of the ads. Now we're going back to the show.

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Speaker 1: So now you've got Now you've got your thing, You've

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Speaker 1: got your big idea. Let's heat up graphite. Let's store

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Speaker 1: in by heating up graphite. Is this the moment when

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Speaker 1: you try and knock yourself down where you're like, let's

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Speaker 1: let's prove that we're wrong. Which I like that as

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Speaker 1: just a way of life. I like that philosophically, I

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Speaker 1: like it intellectually.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we went through and we said, before we actually

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Speaker 2: start this company, we're going to spend one solid month

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Speaker 2: looking for every problem that we can find. Is there

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Speaker 2: any way we can kill this idea? Before we invest

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Speaker 2: the next decade of our lives into trying to commercialize that.

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Speaker 1: And what were some of the most compelling Devil's Advocate

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Speaker 1: cases against this company?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so the first one is just can we get

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Speaker 2: enough of this stuff and can we do it, you know,

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Speaker 2: at a reasonable costs. And what we found really quickly

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Speaker 2: there was that the graphite and carbon supply chain is enormous.

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Speaker 2: So whatever we were doing for the next decade, even

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Speaker 2: if we were getting to tear what our scale, was

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Speaker 2: going to be a rounding error on the size of

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Speaker 2: that industry. So that was really important to us.

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Speaker 1: Was there anything that almost made you not do it?

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Speaker 1: Anything where that was uncertain but you decided on balance

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Speaker 1: it was worth trying anyway.

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Speaker 2: The hardest part was how to move the heat? And

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Speaker 2: so with this there are two ways you can imagine it.

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Speaker 2: You could try to move the graphite, and we actually

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Speaker 2: looked at some crazy concepts early on, like could you

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Speaker 2: move this hot graphite in some way?

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Speaker 1: It was like a hot block of carbon exactly, seems

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Speaker 1: hard to move, seems like you don't want to be

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Speaker 1: moving that.

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Speaker 2: We decided we really didn't want to move around these

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Speaker 2: hot blocks of carbon or even like carbon, you know, gravel,

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Speaker 2: or you know, some other thing that maybe would be

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Speaker 2: would be easier. It all just ended up being really cluegy.

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Speaker 2: The other way that you might do it is find

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Speaker 2: a different material that's a liquid that can withstand those

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Speaker 2: temperatures and that is compatible with graphite, and then pump

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Speaker 2: that around. And so that was maybe a little bit

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Speaker 2: easier to imagine than moving the hot graphite itself, but

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Speaker 2: it ended up having a whole host of other problems.

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Speaker 2: And the solution that we had that we weren't sure

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Speaker 2: was going to work at all those light bulb moments

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Speaker 2: was when you get stuff really hot, it starts to glow,

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Speaker 2: it's emitting light, it's incandescing, and that light itself is

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Speaker 2: actually carrying a tremendous amount of energy with it. It

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Speaker 2: turns out that most heat transfer at high temperatures is

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Speaker 2: actually mediated by light, by thermal radiation.

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Speaker 1: That is not at all intuitive, Right when you think

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Speaker 1: of the hot thing, you don't think that it's the

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Speaker 1: light that is actually carrying the heat, right, That is

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Speaker 1: not the way it feels.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So what that meant was that we could try

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Speaker 2: to have a system that didn't use a heat transfer

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Speaker 2: fluid that didn't use some liquid we were pumping around.

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Speaker 2: If we were able to come up with the right

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Speaker 2: geometries and systems to use light to move heat around

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Speaker 2: in the system, we could theoretically have this really really simple, reliable,

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Speaker 2: nice system. But we weren't sure if there were going

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Speaker 2: to be any geometries or system designs that would work

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Speaker 2: well enough to solve that problem. But we at least

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Speaker 2: had a shot with this using light to move the heat.

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Speaker 1: So that part seems quite hard still right in this

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Speaker 1: universe when you're thinking like will this work? Thinking like, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe we could use light as the sort of vector

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Speaker 1: to get the heat from the block of graphite to

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Speaker 1: where we need it to be. Right like, that sounds

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Speaker 1: complicated and hard. It's wildly hot. It's just the idea

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Speaker 1: of light as the sort of pipe that sounds hard.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was very hard to know if

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Speaker 2: it would work. So we had to take a little

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Speaker 2: bit of a leap of faith at that time that

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Speaker 2: we would be able to solve that problem.

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Speaker 1: You take the leap of faith, you start the company,

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Speaker 1: and where are you now? Have you solved that problem?

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Speaker 2: Yes, we are very very very happy to say that

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Speaker 2: it worked out as well or maybe even better than

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Speaker 2: we were hoping at the start. The ability to use

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Speaker 2: light to move the heat within the system, and it

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Speaker 2: really is just you know, clever use of void space

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Speaker 2: within the system is the answer. You just need to

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Speaker 2: have spots where there isn't carbon so that the light

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Speaker 2: from certain areas of the system can travel to another

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Speaker 2: area of the system because it's going through that that

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Speaker 2: empty space.

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Speaker 1: I mean, what this might be a bad sort of analogy,

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Speaker 1: but what it makes me think of as fiber optics,

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Speaker 1: where you have basically an empty pipe, right and you're

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Speaker 1: flashing light through it and you're sending data as light.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a terrible analogy. I mean, we don't

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Speaker 2: have to have any material to kind of carry the

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Speaker 2: light in where it's just void space. But it is.

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Speaker 2: There are parts of our system that very much look

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Speaker 2: like light pipes. It's you know, kind of a long

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Speaker 2: void space that allows heat from deep within the system

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Speaker 2: to be brought all the way to the surface of

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Speaker 2: the system just by light kind of radiating through a cavity.

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Speaker 1: Through empty space, through empty space. So where are you now?

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Speaker 1: So you have this thing it works, like, does it

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Speaker 1: exist in the world for real.

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Speaker 2: We started small, We built smaller prototypes, things that were

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Speaker 2: kind of bench scale. We moved up to stuff that

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Speaker 2: you would you know, put in a ware house, and

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Speaker 2: now we're actually nearing the completion of construction of our

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Speaker 2: first pilot project. And so this is i think something

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Speaker 2: that's a little bit bigger than a half shipping container,

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Speaker 2: so kind of a big steel box that's filled with

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Speaker 2: graphite blocks and then insulation, and that's storing megawatt hours

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Speaker 2: of energy in the form of that stored heat. And

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Speaker 2: this is going at a customer site in the Central

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Speaker 2: Valley of California. The customers well Head Electric, and their

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Speaker 2: business is largely to generate both electricity and heat for

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Speaker 2: customers in California, and so they're providing us a spot

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Speaker 2: to do this deployment. They have a very interesting location

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Speaker 2: with a natural gas power plant with lithium ion batteries,

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Speaker 2: with a solar farm kind of all co located. So

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Speaker 2: it's a very interesting energy playground where you can see,

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Speaker 2: you how are these things going to have to work

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Speaker 2: together in the future. And that's where our deployment is today.

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Speaker 1: And is it running. Is it super hot right now

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Speaker 1: in Fresno or wherever it is.

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Speaker 2: It is not running yet but will be in the

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Speaker 2: next few weeks. It's it's just about finished construction and

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Speaker 2: the team we are all so excited to be flipping

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Speaker 2: the switch on that a few weeks from now because

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Speaker 2: it's been an incredible amount of work and a very

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Speaker 2: fun project for all of us.

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Speaker 1: So tell me if it works. What's going to happen

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Speaker 1: when you flip the switch?

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Speaker 2: Hopefully not a lot. Yeah, it's always good when there

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Speaker 2: aren't too many surprises when you turn things on, So

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Speaker 2: you know, largely what's going to happen is you're going

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Speaker 2: to be sending electricity into the box that's going to

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Speaker 2: be heating up relatively slowly, heating up this graphite because

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Speaker 2: the graphite can store so much energy. Even when we're

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Speaker 2: putting in lots and lots of energy, you know, the

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Speaker 2: temperature will slowly rise over ten twenty hours.

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Speaker 1: And at some point it gets so hot that it's

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Speaker 1: glowing right like it's so like orange. I mean, is

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Speaker 1: it like like you know what a fire is really hot?

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Speaker 1: Does it? What does it look like?

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Speaker 2: It will be hotter than that?

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Speaker 1: Well, sure it'll be, yeah, but what is it? What's

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Speaker 1: it look like?

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Speaker 2: It really looks white hot. If you've ever seen a

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Speaker 2: picture of like a steel mill or something like that

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Speaker 2: with the steel ribbon being poured out of something, it's

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Speaker 2: that sort of like almost blinding, you know, white, like

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Speaker 2: very very bright.

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Speaker 1: And then so you'll have that stored energy in the

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Speaker 1: form of heat, and then what will happen to it.

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Speaker 2: In the future we'll be selling that heat, But right

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Speaker 2: now we're just going to be taking that heat out

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Speaker 2: and making sure that we can hit all of the

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Speaker 2: specs that our customers care about in the future. Can

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Speaker 2: we provide heat consistently? Can we provide it at the

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Speaker 2: right temperature? Are there any sorts of fluctuations or variability

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Speaker 2: of this? Those are the sorts of metrics we're going

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Speaker 2: to be looking for so that when we talk to

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Speaker 2: future customers we can show them this is going to

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Speaker 2: do the exact same thing that your fossil fuel burner

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Speaker 2: or boiler does for you today, which is provide consistent

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Speaker 2: heat twenty four to seven regardless of what's going on

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Speaker 2: with the weather.

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Speaker 1: So when do you think you'll be doing it for real?

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Speaker 1: When do you think you'll have a real, non pilot

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Speaker 1: paying customer using your heat?

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Speaker 2: What we're looking at for the first like really large

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Speaker 2: projects is likely twenty twenty five deployments, and these are

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Speaker 2: the earliest. Plants we're looking at are ones that are

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Speaker 2: located in the wind belts. So this is places like Kansas, Texas,

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Speaker 2: Iowa that have a huge amount of wind power. The

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Speaker 2: best economics in the world really for turning variable renewable

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Speaker 2: electricity into industrial heat is in the Midwest US, and

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Speaker 2: that's because there's so much wind that's been built out

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Speaker 2: there over the last decade that you actually have wind

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Speaker 2: that's being curtailed or sold at negative prices a decent

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Speaker 2: chunk of the time. So you think about you know,

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Speaker 2: maybe it's at nighttime, the wind's blowing really hard, there

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Speaker 2: isn't that much electricity demand, There isn't enough transmission capacity

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Speaker 2: to send that electricity to.

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Speaker 1: You can get for free basically, you just got to

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Speaker 1: be able to store.

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Speaker 2: It, exactly. You can get energy for free, importantly, for

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Speaker 2: only a small number of hours of the year. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: so you can't get it for free all the time.

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Speaker 2: But if you have something that can absorb that energy

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Speaker 2: really quickly, you can just shove that energy into a

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Speaker 2: box turn it into heat. Then that energy can be nearly.

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Speaker 3: Free in a minute, the Lightning Round, including one essential

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Speaker 3: lesson about engineering and why Andrew went back to college

401
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Speaker 3: after first dropping out, starting a company and selling.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's get back to the show. We're gonna close

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Speaker 1: with the lightning round. I want to do a lightning round.

404
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Speaker 1: I want to ask you just a bunch of weird questions.

405
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Speaker 1: I love it. I've heard you talk about this one

406
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Speaker 1: class you took, I believe with Bill Day who's now

407
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Speaker 1: at Nvidia. I've heard you talk about it as really

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Speaker 1: influential on the way you think sort of broadly about

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Speaker 1: really about engineering, right about the sort of discipline of engineering.

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Speaker 1: What was the essential thing you learned from him?

411
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Speaker 2: Bill Ally was an incredible mentor incredible teacher. The thing

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Speaker 2: that I really learned from him was how to boil

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Speaker 2: problems down to their essence. And this is you know,

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Speaker 2: in every field. Engineering is not unique this way. It's

415
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Speaker 2: so easy to get sort of confused or you know,

416
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Speaker 2: flustered by all of the complexity and a problem. But

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Speaker 2: in most cases, a huge portion that complexity can be

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Speaker 2: ignored because it isn't going to be important to the outcome.

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Speaker 1: With the weather, you prefer too hot or too cold.

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Speaker 2: I love too cold over too hot.

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Speaker 1: Same. I'll take a New York winter over in New

422
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Speaker 1: York summer all day. Agreed. So you, if I understand

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Speaker 1: it right, dropped out of college, started a company, sold it,

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Speaker 1: and then went back to college. Why did you go back?

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Speaker 2: The funny answer is because I promised my parents I

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Speaker 2: would go back to college.

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Speaker 1: Also true, that's true.

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Speaker 2: Also funny and true. But I absolutely loved my time

429
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Speaker 2: at Stanford. I think it was one of the best

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Speaker 2: experiences of my life.

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Speaker 1: Then the question is, so why did you drop out? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: So I was working with a team of incredible people

433
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Speaker 2: and on this project that became my first company, Dragonfly,

434
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Speaker 2: and it was it was not a choice. It felt

435
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Speaker 2: so important to us to make sure that the technology

436
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Speaker 2: we were working on got out in the world and

437
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Speaker 2: made a difference that there is almost no question in

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Speaker 2: our minds that that was the right thing for us

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Speaker 2: to do. And that is what I advise people. When

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Speaker 2: I've had people ask, you know, who are thinking about,

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Speaker 2: you know, dropping out to start a company, I say,

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Speaker 2: if you're questioning whether you should do it or not,

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Speaker 2: probably just just stay in school.

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Speaker 1: If everything goes well, what problem will you be trying

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Speaker 1: to solve in say, five years.

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Speaker 2: Ooh, probably in five years. International expansion is going to

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Speaker 2: be one of the biggest parts of what we're doing.

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Speaker 2: We see a pretty clear path within the US market

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Speaker 2: and to some extent, the North American market, but we're

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Speaker 2: not going to be satisfied unless we're making global impact.

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Speaker 2: And so five years from now, that's what we're going

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Speaker 2: to be doing. And that's hard. That's hard for any company,

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Speaker 2: and it will certainly be hard for us as well.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the US market is very big. Like, if

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Speaker 1: that's where you are, right, that's good. That's a happy story.

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Speaker 2: It might be a happy story from a business perspective,

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Speaker 2: but it's not a happy enough story from a climate perspective.

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Speaker 2: The US is less than ten percent of emissions.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the related question is can other

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Speaker 1: people just do what you're doing? Like how much YP

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Speaker 1: do you have? If it works well, could a lot

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Speaker 1: of people do it? And there's different ways to play that, right,

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Speaker 1: That could be a happy story if what you want

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Speaker 1: is for everybody in the world to do it, or

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Speaker 1: it could be a sad story if you're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: everybody's stealing ourp.

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Speaker 2: I love that framing.

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Speaker 1: How would you feel if lots of other people did

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Speaker 1: versions of what you did and it worked.

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Speaker 2: I would feel great about that personally, and I think

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Speaker 2: our team would as well, a lot of confidence in

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Speaker 2: our ability to not just because we have IP, but

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Speaker 2: also because we're going to execute well be the leader

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Speaker 2: in this area. But if you told me that fifteen

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Speaker 2: years from now, almost every industrial site around the world

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Speaker 2: either has a thermal energy storage box with graphite in

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Speaker 2: it or is planning to get one, and that somehow

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Speaker 2: and Tora wasn't the supplier of those, I would still say,

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Speaker 2: you know, we've accomplished our mission as a company.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for being so generous with your time. This

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Speaker 1: is oh thank you was This was really a joy.

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Speaker 2: I loved all the good pressure and you know, making

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Speaker 2: me say things that are not just you know, platitudes.

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Speaker 2: And I think we got into some very real but

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Speaker 2: interesting things as well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I love learning, so me to thank you for

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Speaker 1: telling me things I didn't know. Yeah. Absolutely. Andrew Ponnick

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Speaker 1: is co founder and CEO of and Torah Energy. Today's

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Speaker 1: show was produced by David Jaw, edited by Sarah Nicks,

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Speaker 1: and engineer by Amanda k. Wong. You can email us

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Speaker 1: at problem at Pushkin dot FM. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and

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Speaker 1: we'll be back next week with another episode of What's

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Speaker 1: Your Problem.